Plato’s dialogues (Timaeus and Critiaeus) proclaim that Atlantis was a real island that existed in ancient history. Through Critias he claims that it was revealed in Solon's poem, which Plato wrote was factual and not a work of fiction.
The initial task before us then is to establish exactly where Atlantis was according to his Dialogues. To that end we do not need to be code-breakers. It is well-articulated in the first dialogue and elaborated upon in the second.
In fact, the lost island’s location is made crystal clear in Timaeus by the speaker Critias. Ironically, while modern scholar’s hold the Greek philosopher in the highest esteem in every other matter he addressed, they dismiss his Atlantis history with disdain.
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This presents a rather odd, contradictory portrait of a Greek intellectual genius in antiquity. Suddenly we find his genius eclipsed when applied to history. What happened, are we to assume, Plato’s usually well-tempered mind went off the rails?
First we are told he was brilliant, then that he could not distinguish fact from fiction. A worse interpretation would contain a harsher criticism, he was intellectually dishonest.
In essence, that is what modern scholars insinuate. I say that because Plato went to the trouble to note that the account of Atlantis was historical. Would he have inserted that in the dialogue if was not so? That seems very doubtful.
All that aside naturally the above assertions, regarding the veracity of Plato’s Dialogues needs proving. Let us start that process and turn to that task now.
Timeaus is mostly in the form of a long monologue given by the titular character, written c. 360 BC. The work puts forward observations and musings on the nature of the physical world, geometry and human beings first.
That discourse is followed by the second dialogue, Critias.
The first dialogue takes place the day after Socrates described his ideal state. In Plato's works such a discussion occurs in his abstract Republic. Socrates explains that he feels that his description of the ideal state wasn't sufficient for the purposes of entertainment and that prompts him to say, "I would be glad to hear some account of it engaging in transactions with other states.”
Critias intervenes, with the permission of Timaeus, and proceeds to tell the story of Solon's journey to Egypt where he hears the story of Atlantis. Then how Athens used to be an ideal state that subsequently waged war against Atlantis.
It is actually in the Timaeus dialogue that we find Critias establishing the exact location of the lost continent. After requesting and receiving permission to speak from Timaues, Critias turns to Socrates:
“Then listen, Socrates, to a tale which, though strange, is certainly true, having been attested by Solon, who was the wisest of the seven sages. He was a relative and a dear friend of my great-grandfather, Dropides, as he himself says in many passages of his poems; and he told the story to Critias, my grandfather, who remembered and repeated it to us...
Socrates becomes engaged and curious, “Very good. And what is this ancient famous action of the Athenians, which Critias declared, on the authority of Solon, to be not a mere legend, but an actual fact?” (Bold mine)
Given that brief introduction we pick up that portion of the Timaeus dialogue that has Critias speaking. We are skipping some extraneous matters to do so. And cutting to the heart of our chase, which is that section of the text describing where Atlantis was located:
Critias: “… For these histories tell of a mighty power which unprovoked made an expedition against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an end… This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together…”
He puts Atlantis in the Atlantic directly in front and east of the Strait of Gibraltar. It is as plain as day and set down in black and white print. We must wonder why we hear of the lost continent being severywhere but where Plato put it. He also notes that it was a large island.
Libya in that time referred to the whole of North Africa. Now the very next bit of information is pivotal.
Critias: “...and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbor, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent.”
After placing Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean in front and east of the Strait of Gibraltar, then Critias mentions that there are other islands beyond that one, and lying farther beyond them a continent (America). He finishes by referring to the Mediterranean Sea as but a harbor, when compared to that (Atlantic) ocean.
He also makes a point to state that the real ocean lies beyond that narrow entrance, which is obviously the passage through the bottleneck Strait of Gibraltar. Anyone who marches off to South America to find Atlantis either has never read Plato or had a reading comprehension problem when they did.
The insert shows just how narrow the strait, into and out of, the Mediterranean Sea is. Clearly Critias points right to this geographical feature.
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Critias: “Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others (author’s underline), and over parts of the continent, and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the strait...”
In the above section we are told that Atlantis was an empire that had a central island “and several others”; repeating that it was comprised of multiple islands. Then the account goes on to say that the people of Atlantis also ruled over parts of North Africa, from the Straits of Gibraltar all the way to Egypt
Every piece of information, every detail matters and has far reaching implications. We shall run into them in North Africa repeatedly as this investigation progresses.
The below insert simply gives a graphic illustration of where Plato was pointing to. I was in the eastern Atlantic, as described, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar.
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At this point we need to be very focused on just how specific the text is in geographic terms. In a sense, we to drill it in and wipe away any doubts or distractions.
Critias specifically points to the Strait of Gibraltar as the demarcating feature; the islands of Atlantis lie beyond to the west. After that he turns eastward pointing back to North Africa (Libya) which was within the straits, and the Mediterranean Sea separating Europe and North Africa.
All of those known geographic features are identified several times to make it abundantly clear.
We should not have any doubt about the exact geographical region that we are being given in this dialogue from now on. It is precise and unequivocal. If you want to position what Plato described elsewhere, then it is not Atlantis but some other lost civilization.
How could it be Atlantis since that is Plato’s name for it?
This is the key material we have to work with. Critias, in the first dialogue, is the main Atlantis literary reference and it is neither vague nor confusing. But critics often argue that Plato invented Atlantis because no other ancient historians mentioned it.
That charge is simply not true.
Diordorus Siculus was a Greek geographer and historian. We find him referring to Plato’s “work of fiction” in the following passage:
“Setting out from the city of Cherronesus, the account continues, the Amazons embarked upon great ventures, a longing having come over them to invade many part of the inhabited world. The first people against whom they advanced, according to the tale, was the Atlantians, the most civilized men among the inhabitants of those regions…
…Upon entering the land of the Atlantians they defeated in a pitched battle the inhabitants of the city of Cernê… now the Atlantians, dwelling as they do in the regions on the edge of the ocean and inhabiting a fertile territory, are reputed far to excel their neighbors in reverence towards the gods…”
Siculus was not alone. Herodotus, considered the father of western history, wrote the following,
“Near the salt is a mountain called Atlas… The natives call his mountain "the Pillar of Heaven"; and they themselves take their name from it, being called Atlantes.”
Those are not trivial, irrelevant references, both specifically refer to Atlantis and its descendants. Herodotus wrote his passage in the context of travels in Morocco and near Mt. Atlas. Which means the inhabitants of that region had the name Atlantes attached to them even in his day.
Where did it come and who were those people?
We shall be investigating that and trying to answer those questions. Like I noted above, every seemingly insignificant detail matters. Even a name can be a clue that leads to an important connection or discovery.
Linguists plays a part in this quest for Atlantis. Trying to track down exactly how the Atlantic Ocean got that name is a difficult task. Picking up that gauntlet we are led right back to Herodotus. The oldest known mention of “Atlantic” is in ‘The Histories of Herodotus’ around 450 BC.
In Greek, Atlantis means “Island of Atlas”, or in some contexts, “Sea of Atlas”. But the actual sea that we call the Atlantic Ocean was yet to be recorded in any written language, Greek or otherwise, when he noted it. That is except in Plato’s “fictional” dialogues.
One wonders how the Greeks got the names of their gods attached to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco too. Everything to do with Atlantis has some elements of mystery attached to it.
It is even more curious to find that the Aztecs of Mexico called their lost homeland, Aztlan. They even built an artificial island in a shallow lake to put their capitol city, Tenochtitlan on That was so it would duplicate the ancient city on Aztlan.
Moreover, the atl letters actually form a word in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Atl means water.
Historians have used linguistic connections to clarify various matters, connections between cultures and so forth. In the case of the word Atlantis, it appears that Plato’s “mythical” lost continent became the name of the very real ocean. That is where an etymological search ends up. Ironic.
I noted two respected ancient intellectuals above who referred to Atlantis. Here I will bring in another, Pliny the Elder. He wrote the following, “Polybius informs us that Cerne lies at the extremity of Mauretania, over against Mount Atlas, a mile from the coast…”
Mauetania is the ancient name of Morocco. Cerne is an island off the West Coast of North Africa. Now with that established we are oriented and can grasp the rest of Pliny’s commentary.
“There is also reported to be another island off Mount Atlas, itself also called Atlantis, from which a two days’ voyage along the coast reaches the desert district in the neighborhood of the Western Ethiopians.” (Natural History, pg.487)
Anyone that claims that only Plato refers to Atlantis has not done their homework. Pliny’s account actually narrows down the location substantially. He points to the region of the Atlantic due west of southern Morocco as where Atlantis or at least part of it was. (Western Ethiopia was actually the West Africa back then.)
So a two days voyage from off the coast of Morroco would put us in Atlantis, far back in that day.
Here we have all these references, from credible ancient sources, identifying the location of Atlantis. To add to that, the place names of Mt. Atlas, the names of the locals, the Atlantes, but no the lost continent is a myth.
In his book “Atlantis the Antideluvian World” Ignatius Donnelly makes a very good point, which seems to have anticipated the modern scholarly disdain for Plato’s account.
“If Plato had sought to draw from his imagination a wonderful and pleasing story, we should not have had so plain and reasonable a narrative. He would have given us a history like the legends of Greek mythology, full of the adventures of gods and goddesses, nymphs, fauns, and satyrs.”
He hit the nail on the head.
That Plato emphasized the account Critias was to give was factual history underscores it. The Greek philosopher used none of the usual literary props or devices typical of works of fiction produced in his culture.
“Neither is there any evidence on the face of this history that Plato sought to convey in it a moral or a political lesson, in the guise of a fable, as did Bacon in the "New Atlantis…"
Donnelly effectively anticipated the modern academic view and launched a sound rebuttal to it.
Ignatius Donnelly was a highly respected, successful 19th century gentleman. He held high office as a U.S. Congressman and was also a published author, and amateur scientist.
Though today, scholars dismiss his work as pseudoscience the court of public opinion will have the final say. The people will determine who has and who has not been a pseudoscientist.
He opened his book with an introduction to his purpose for writing it.
“This book is an attempt to demonstrate several distinct and novel propositions. These are:
1. That there once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, opposite the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, a large island, which was the remnant of an Atlantic continent, and known to the ancient world as Atlantis.
2. That the description of this island given by Plato is not, as has been long supposed, fable, but veritable history.
3. That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a state of barbarism to civilization.
4. That it became, in the course of ages, a populous and mighty nation, from whose overflowings the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, the Amazon, the Pacific coast of South America, the Mediterranean, the west coast of Europe and Africa, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Caspian were populized by civilized nations…”
I entirely agree with him on these points and they are the key issues to establish. However, there is one final one that he finished with.
13. That a few persons escaped in ships and on rafts, and, carried to the nations east and west the tidings of the appalling catastrophe, which has survived to our own time in the Flood and Deluge legends of the different nations of the old and new worlds…’’ (Atlantis the Antediluvian World)
Indeed, that latter point becomes the pivot upon which my research was focused and turned. Critias mentioned that the Atlanteans had colonized and were ruling over Libya. That has implications as we shall find later.
Looking at Lost Atlantis as a new case, a detective might start by breaking it down into basics. Sunken Island hard to find. But maybe some people survived and escaped…hmmm. Yes, as Donnelly suggested that was the logical clue to follow.
Where would they have gone? Since our early historians verified Plato’s account we know where the lost continent was located. That was to the west of southern Iberia and North Africa.
Many researchers into Atlantis look for physical remnants, study google maps, various geographic locations, and/or search for artifacts. Nonetheless I decided to search for people, specifically cultures that had anomalies attached to them.
Over the years Atlantis has turned up in South America, Antarctica, South Europe, and other locations on the map. I do not doubt that Atlantis researchers found evidence of a lost civilization or culture. But they were not Plato’s Atlantis.
Using Plato’s description to the letter it was obvious to me that any survivors would have fled to the Iberian Peninsula and/or North Africa. Actually, I saw that the Canary Islands would have been closer to the islands of Atlantis than the mainland of North Africa was.
I began my research, in earnest, many years ago investigating the Canary Islands first. At the time, while I had beard of the islands, I really did not know anything about their ancient history. (We shall get to that in detail in the next chapter.)
However, at this point I would like to set the stage with more background details. In the dialogues Plato gives the approximate date of the disaster that caused it to sink into the sea at around 9,000 BC, 11,000 years ago.
That set an approximate date and era to work with. That gave me the necessary period to look within that the survivors would have appeared in the paleontological record. Without that we would not know if it sank 50,000 or 100,000 years ago or whenever.
Here I must make several points very clear. While I argue against the conventional views - held by the modern historical - that is true. However, I also acknowledge that this community has made tremendous progress over the last 100 years. Aided by new, advanced technologies such as satellite GPR…countless new discoveries have been made.
In fact the pace has been quickening in the opening decades of the 21st century.
In particular, some of the discoveries have occurred in Morocco, North Africa and in the Iberian Peninsula.
For example, excavations at Jebel Irhoud, near Morocco’s west coast, first uncovered the 40,000-year-old bones of some of the earliest members of the Homo sapiens lineage in 1961.
However in 2006, the Max Planck Institute announced they had unearthed remains at the site that dated back 300,000 years.
Those are some of the oldest bones of modern Homo sapiens yet found anywhere and they happen to be right in our area of interest. However, those dates are far too early to associate with the survivors of Atlantis.
But that brings up another point that Plato made about the culture of the lost continent we must consider. He noted that the Atlanteans ruled over North Africa for an extended period. I emphasized that above. That would indicate that at least some of them settled there.
However, during what era we know not. Yet Plato’s allusion raises the issue of early Atlantis immigrants being in North Africa before the island sank. If the Atlanteans ruled the region some would naturally have settled there.
The well-established history of numerous conquests shows this is the pattern that the conquering culture follows.
That probability adds a dimension to this investigation that complicates it. Yet it may well also make it more productive. We shall find out as the following chapters unfold.
It is time to rig the sails and chart out the course to our first destination.
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